Berlin Development Project, Friedrichstadt District, Office and Commercial Buildings, Berlin, Germany, Perspective View

Leading up to his work at the Bauhaus, German architect and urban planner Ludwig Hilberseimer created several dramatic, experimental plans to remake the historical European city. His Friedrichstadt project, for example, proposed replacing a large section of existing historical urban fabric in central Berlin with nine massive linear blocks. While grounded in studies of the local economy and environment, the visual language of this project is part of a broader modernist visual propaganda created by many architects of the period, most famously Le Corbusier, pitting the order of the new city against the disorder—whether imagined or real—of the old.